In the 1880s, the southwest coast of British Columbia was a place where different worlds met and reshaped one another. Indigenous nations whose histories stretched back countless generations continued to live, work, and move through their territories even as the colonial state expanded its reach.

Government census data from 1883 indicate that there were large and diverse Indigenous populations. Specifically, the Coast Salish community of Sliammon (Tla’amin), located along Malaspina Strait, had a population of 212 people. During this time, the Dominion of Canada classified them as nomadic Indigenous peoples.

First Nations across Canada were increasingly classified as “Agencies” and “Bands,” labels that emphasized colonial priorities rather than Indigenous identities. Many Indigenous people continued to travel seasonally to work in mills and logging camps around New Westminster and Burrard Inlet. They adapted to new economic pressures while still maintaining strong connections to their homelands.

At the same time, surveyors were redrawing the homelands into numbered lots and geometric parcels. A map printed in 1883 by W.F. Tolmie and G.M. Dawson, titled “Map Showing the Distribution of the Indian Tribes of British Columbia,” grouped almost all the First Nations from the Mid-Interior to the southwest coast of the mainland under the label “Tsilhqot’in.” This map was printed by the Burland Lithographic Company in Montreal and distributed to the public.

A new era is rapidly taking shape in the Dominion of Canada and the Province of British Columbia. Surveyors have drawn the reserve boundaries for the Sliammon (Tla’amin) Nation only on paper, and the BC Indian Commission refuses to accept the work because the surveys are considered poorly executed. Meanwhile, government officials in the New Westminster District Group 1 actively survey District Lots and sell them as Crown Grants for as little as one dollar per acre.

The Moodyville Sawmill Company, under Mr. Rithet, applied for the southeast quarter of Lot 9 on Texada Island, located in Gillies Bay on the western shores of the island. This application was not merely for a land grant; it also included a Timber License, granted on February 12, 1883. While Texada Island is better known for its mining activities, this marked the arrival of the first sawmill company on the island, helping to establish a new community in Gillies Bay.

The Moodyville Sawmill Company, which had obtained timber licenses for several locations on the mainland since 1874, set its sights on Malaspina Inlet. On October 24, 1883, it applied for 160 acres of land under the direction of Secretary R.P. Rithet. An advertisement for the application was published in The British Columbian newspaper until the legal period for granting the land had expired.

Surveyors mapped District Lot 500 on August 12, 1884, and the government issued the Crown Grant on March 15, 1885. Officials knew that DL 500 bordered a Sliammon (Tla’amin) reserve that neither the Land Commission nor the Indian Commissioner had properly surveyed or legally recognized. Despite that unresolved boundary and the Nation’s unconfirmed land status, the government still granted DL 500.

Hand-drawn maps of places in Malaspina Inlet reveal how coastlines, once understood through stories, harvesting sites, and kinship territories, were converted into gridded property. Land Registry ledgers show these parcels passing from Crown ownership into the hands of settlers and corporations, each entry marking another step in the transformation of land into a commodity.

Industrial expansion accelerated this process. Companies like the Moodyville Saw-Mill Company, formally incorporated in 1878, were granted extensive powers to acquire land, build mills, operate logging camps, and mortgage property. These companies became key drivers of coastal development, attracting investment from Victoria and beyond. They created company towns where workers lived close to the mills, and the smell of freshly cut timber wafted across the water as they expanded into the coastal region.

Indigenous labour was essential in these operations. Although companies profited from land taken from Indigenous nations, they worked to reshape their own territories.

Collectively, these elements illustrate a coast experiencing significant changes. Indigenous nations continued to assert their presence and adapt to new circumstances, while the colonial government expanded its administrative and territorial control. Industrial corporations transformed forests and shorelines into sites of resource extraction, and settler towns envisioned themselves as vibrant centers of commerce.

This period pushed old and new ways of life into confrontation. Communities, governments, and surveyors all knew that unresolved land disputes, especially around Indigenous territories, remained unsettled. Yet officials continued to press ahead, laying out new surveys, issuing Crown Grants, and advancing settlement even as those conflicts lingered in plain sight. The result was a landscape constantly in motion, shaped by competing claims and a government determined to move forward regardless of the disputes it had not resolved.